In the design of a computer system, cooling is an important issue. Every electronic element will generate heat during operation. If the heat is not dispelled, the element will malfunction or even be damaged. Hence cooling is necessary. The most common approach to dispel heat is to couple the heating element with a thermal conductive element. The thermal conductive element aims to enlarge the cooling area of the heating element so that cooling efficiency may increase. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 6,532,141 discloses an electronic element cooling structure, referring to FIG. 1 of that patent application. It has a body containing a plurality of coupling sections. Each coupling section has screw threads. The body further has a thermal conductive duct running through the center of the coupling section and extending outside. A radiator is provided that has a plurality of annular radiation fins on the outer surface. The radiator has two ends aligned in the axial direction. One end has internal screw treads. The other end is connected to a connecting section, which has external screw threads. The internal screw threads of the radiator may be fastened to the external screw threads of the coupling section to form a connection. The coupling section has a thermal conductive duct extended therefrom. The radiator has a hole in the center to receive the thermal conductive duct. Several radiators may be connected consecutively to increase the cooling efficiency.
R.O.C. patent publication No. 585303 also discloses an improved radiation blade for computers, referring to FIGS. 4 and 5 of that patent application. It is a composite radiation blade. Each radiation blade has a unit body with a latch structure. Hence the unit body may be coupled to form a set of stacking radiation blades. Each stacking unit body is spaced from a neighboring unit body by an air gap to provide a ventilation channel for cooling.
The cooling structure of the aforesaid reference No. 141 mainly is connected to an electronic element that generates a great amount of heat. It provides a large cooling area and an improved thermal conduction structure, but is not a bracing structure. The cited reference of No. 303 aims to couple a number of unit bodies through the latch structure to form a composite radiation blade. The unit bodies are stacked to increase the cooling area. However, the latch structure can only couple the unit body in an upright manner, not in a paired and juxtaposed manner. While it provides cooling and a limited support, the unit bodies are not coupled securely, and are prone to loosen and tumble. This could cause trouble. Moreover, the latch structure cannot increase the cooling area very much, and the improvement of the cooling efficiency is limited.